School Shooting #18 on Day #45

So there was yet another school shooting. The eighteenth this year, I believe, and the year is only 45 days old.

Again we hear the nightmare stories of children hearing and watching and feeling their friends get murdered in the next classroom, in front of them, on top of them…

Again we see the distraught parents of murdered children and wounded children and again we watch them crying, begging, screaming for change.

Again we hear the news anchors go over all the recent school shootings. Again we hear the insane statistics of American mass shootings compared to the practically non-existent mass shootings — and shootings in general — in other industrialized countries. Again the pundits ask what it’s going to take for politicians to do something.

Again all we we hear Republicans say is “…this tragic event blah blah blah … our hearts and minds are with blah blah blah…thoughts and prayers blah blah blah!

Again we hear them say that now’s not the time to talk about gun control, that talking about gun control is a knee-jerk reaction, that we don’t want to infringe on citizens’ second-amendment rights. Blah blah fucking blah!

And Trump, who was in such a hurry to undo everything Obama accomplished, including measures to prevent mentally ill people from purchasing guns, signed his executive order to that effect a year ago and then held it up for the world to see: Look Mommy, I signed my name! We now hear Trump say that the young man who murdered these kids was mentally ill, and that we need to do something about the mentally ill. And in that deranged dreamy voice he uses when he thinks he’s reading something real deep off the teleprompter, Trump, of all people, says that we must answer hate with love and that we must answer cruelty with kindness. Blah blah fucking, FUCKING blah!

We hear the family who hosted the shooter in the months before the massacre say that he was a polite young man, perfectly normal. But he had an AR 15! There was nothing to indicate that he would do such a thing. BUT HE HAD A FUCKING AR 15!No mentally stable civilian needs an AR 15! What is wrong with people?!?

Again, in the coming days we’ll hear gun nuts on social media say that AR 15s don’t kill people, people kill people. Blah blah blah! Anyone with a pulse will again point out that murdering a lot of children within minutes is a whole lot easier and a whole lot harder for someone else to stop if you have an AR 15 than if you have, say, a paring knife.

As the saying goes: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

If you continue to let the NRAliterally dictate policy on Capitol Hill, every politician who accepts campaign contributions from the NRA will continue to claim that now is not the time to talk about gun restrictions. If you continue to allow the sale of semi-automatic weapons, people will continue to carry out mass murder with semi-automatic weapons. If you continue to do nothing but have thoughts and prayers, nothing is going to change, because there is no bearded wizard in the sky who will fix this with a magic wand! The guns are real, the children murdered are real, the teachers murdered are real, the grieving families are real, and the country needs real solutions, real votes for politicians who support real gun control, not more of the same fucking prayers!

4 responses to “School Shooting #18 on Day #45”

I read your hartfealt frustration.
Again a shooting and the same words and thoughts and prayers will be expressed.

What comfort will the same words and prayers give the victims, wounded, parents, first responders and nothing will change!
Hollow words, hollow prayers!
They have lost their emotion, their compassion because they were uttered over and over again.

If every time a shooting happens thoughts and prayers aren’t accompagnied by discussing the cause and the possible cures; when does it stop?
Don’t use a shooting as an excuse not to adress the different causes of it
How many children, adults will die, till the American citizen takes action
When will another shooting be enough that Americans say: Stop this circle of violence.

You call the country mentally ill!
If this would be fact, they wouldn’t acountable for their actions..

The government and its citizens
They are sane, they know what they are doing.
They are responsable!
Their lack of taking preventative actions makes them accountable!
They are guilty!
They uphold the conditions that endagers every American citizen.

Australia for instance learned a hard lesson after the Port Arthur shooting
The government and its citizens there have shown that change in gun controle is possible.
Because the will to prevent such shootings was made a priority.
They learned that the hard way, yes, but they learned!

As I read about shootings in the US and the reasons why they keep ongoing the NRA is mentioned.
The NRA’s gunlobby that endorses/owns politicians.

That is true!
However there is one thing in that remark that irritates me.
It is, more often than not, said in a way if this is a constant that can’t/will not be changed.
People seem to resign oneself in that.

If I have learned one thing in my live:
A bad situation should be adressed and never resigned in!

What Folks Have Been Reading

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Archives: The Whole Shebang

Archives: The Whole Shebang

WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING

In the late 60s Richard Proenneke built his own cabin in the Alaskan wilderness with only a few simple tools. He spent most of the rest of his life there. Sam Keith fleshed out Proenneke's diary of his first 16 months, when he was making his home by a lake. I love these kinds of books!

An old Oji-Cree healer and her nephew canoe down a river in Canada, away from the world of white people. They both have to come to terms with their past. The woman has lost most of her tribe and the young man is traumatized from his recent experience in the Belgian trenches of World War One. My second book by Boyden. Can't say enough about him.

An incredibly comprehensive history of everything related to slavery in the Southern United States, from the beginning of the colonies to the end of the Civil War. Over 700 pages and I took over 30 pages of notes. I will be sharing over many posts to come!

Hamid's debut novel. I love this author. A young man in Lahore, Pakistan, is the victim of love, drugs, obsession, the class system and his complete lack of self-awareness.

A golem, created in Poland and brought to life on a ship to America, and a jinni who was trapped in a flask a thousand years ago and released in New York -- the most unusual immigrants you'll ever meet.

The only part of her life a Korean woman can control is her body, so she withdraws into it. Harrowing.

Autobiography lightly disguised as a novel about the son of Southern migrants growing up on the streets of Harlem, New York City, in the 1940s and 50s. Written like you're hearing the whole story in a bar. Quite a feat.

The story of a man struggling to make a living in Morocco. No plot, no clearly defined characters, but fascinating in its authenticity.

Pakistani man tells an American about his experience as a college student and employee of an assessment firm in America years ago. Smart, nuanced and pretty darn honest considering the unreliable narrator.

Wow! The answer to the inane platitudes about how all parents love their children and how children should always respect their parents. The protagonist must come to terms with his deeply flawed immigrant parents in order to change himself.

Seven short stories about life during the Kim Il-sung regime, by a writer who still lives and works in North Korea, were smuggled out of the country and translated. Mind-boggling stuff.

A 15-year-old autistic narrator wants to know who killed a neighbor's dog, and ends up much further out of his comfort zone than he planned. Wonderful read!

In politics, education, religion, agriculture, business--it turns out that dumbing down has been here from the start.

Fifty years of Istanbul seen through the eyes of a street vendor who migrates to the city as a young boy. It's also a window into the complicated dance between men and women in Turkey.

Hey, don't laugh, at least I'm trying.

A Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with six other people on a tiny island off the coast of Maine all winter in 1873. A woman in the present researching the Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with three other people on a tiny sailboat. What could possibly go wrong?

A man stuck between two worlds in more ways than one. Fascinating!

Historical novel about early contacts between first nations and the French in Canada. Beautifully written story that doesn't pull any punches. I bought his other two novels right away.

Beautifully written. By my children's favorite English and Creative Writing teacher! It's got rave reviews and we're all very proud of her.

Suki Kim is a Korean-American journalist. She poses as an evangelical Christian posing as an English teacher at a school for the sons of North Korea's elite. Her experience and the information she manages to get via writing assignments are incredible. Definitely a lot more eye-opening that any CNN special.

This. Explains. Everything!!!

Why has Islam not undergone a reformation like Christianity? Why is it so easy for Islamic extremist groups like IS to recruit young muslims? What would it take for Islam in fundamentalist Islamic countries to enter modernity? Does the West have a role to play?

Amazing! A man wanders endlessly through a dreamscape, becoming other people, himself in the past, everything is fluid. Kafkaesque disconnect between people and their different needs.

A multi-layered novel about the history of Libya. A fast read, but one you can repeat and find something new each time.

Twelve Americans go missing in Burma/Myanmar during a tour. Touching and hilarious, but mostly hilarious.

The quote on the front mentions that these stories are exhilerating. I couldn't disagree more. They are almost unbearably painful to read, and yet I couldn't put them down. Very well done, apart from the third story, which is written in the second tense. Please let me know if you know of ONE story that works in second tense.